For reasons largely pertaining to their huge set of teeth and the movie Jaws, humans have a bit of an irrational fear of sharks, with the common belief being held that they will devour you on sight. But rarely do we consider how the sharks must feel from this whole debacle. Derrick in particular is having a rather awful time, with the sea he inhabits being filled with pollution and his parents both being sucked up and put in a can. Understandably, he’s a tad upset and as a result is going on a worldwide quest to clear away these pesty humans and the toxic waste they’ve been chucking into the ocean. On paper you wouldn’t imagine this to be a cute scenario, which I suppose is somewhat ironic considering paper has such a large role in making it one.

Derrick the Deathfin is a game made entirely of paper, with origami characters, cardboard backgrounds, and cut out waves pasted together in an elaborate display of creativity and vibrant color. Take one look at the delightful art and it’s hard not to be immediately charmed, with the grooving soundtrack adding just the right overtone for such a wondrously enjoyable game. The hilariously self aware tips that pop up between levels and the stupendously horrible puns are just the delectable icing on the cake.

When you manage to get over the fantastic visual design, the actual game takes the form of something of an underwater platformer. Racing through levels you collect gems and hop out of the water through tires on your way to the finish line, with the catch being Derrick’s insatiable hunger that stands in for your health bar and requires you to continuously stuff your face with fish, birds, and the occasional stray child or else shrivel up and keel over. What makes this so enjoyable is how fast and fun it is to guide your deathfin through water, swimming with all the force and speed you’d expect of a shark, biting through everything in your path as they disappear in a comical “poof”. Unfortunately it’s also one of the games biggest issues.

As a giant predator there’s little in the way of danger on your journey to rid the waters of your foes (and anyone else who might stray into your path), but you’ll find a persistent enemy in the wild controls. Momentum plays a large role in movement in Derrick, but this becomes an issue in terms of controls as it’s incredibly easy to lose control and cause your character to flip out of control, often cutting you short of a jump or getting you stuck on the environment (a frustrating and consistent occurrence). This is all so terribly disappointing because when you can actually get a grip on the controls moving through the water feels terrific, but often this is easier said than done.

Surprisingly, the handful of time trial levels which do away with collectibles and send you flying through levels as fast as possible work far better with the often confounding controls, as without the need to control yourself with much of any precision they become almost completely a non issue. It’s too bad there are so few of these interspersed through the games 4 “worlds”, as they are a far better showcase of the best Derrick has to offer.

Even with a few controller qualms, there’s no way I could say I didn’t enjoy Derrick the Deathfin immensely. It’s imaginative, charming, and full of so much love and personality that I can’t help but want to pick it up and hug it (assuming you could do that to a game). The adventure is a brief one, clocking in at just about 2 hours, but if you fancy yourself a shark advocate or are just a fan of cute animals. eating other animals (?) there’s a lot to enjoy in this tale of adorable revenge.

PS: Don’t litter folks; respect the sharks!

Full disclosure: Derrick the Deathfin was reviewed using a copy of the game provided by the developer.

Taking only the aesthetics into account, it's hard NOT to recommend this game. It's just such a joy to look at.

But looking at the gameplay, I can't recommend this game.

While the Time Trial levels mostly work, the are very shallow - fun wise. The collection levels on the other hand aren't fun at all. You're supposed to use momentum to get all the collectibles, but more often than not you just bump into things or miss gems and get frustrated.

I don't understand why they didn't make a game similar to Ecco the Dolphin or Aquaria? An action-adventure would have complimented the style so much better, than this hectic shadow of a game. Style over substance, sadly.

Hands down the greatest attraction and calibre in this game come from its papercraft art style. It's fun to look at, humorous both in writing and art, and the story itself is better than most arcade games in general, let alone indie-arcade.

Gameplay can be a frustrating or challenging aspect of Derrick, depending on how you view it. It follows the trend of mechanics-as-game (i.e. qwop) where trying to play the game IS the game. While Derrick is not extreme enough to be placed in that category, learning to use the mechanics to play the game will be a good portion of initial gameplay.

The arcade environment as well is different, as the levels seemingly will encourage you to explore, yet the timer is short enough that you can't stray too far from the main path - though that brings me to my next point.

There isn't a clear main path.

Most timed arcade games will have a very narrow or fixed path for the character to go (like endless runner games), but the basic game mode will not. This can be frustrating if you're looking to explore the level further vs run through to get a good time.

Having said all this, because the game is so different, I hesistate to categorize these as negatives because once you adjust or set these expectations in mind, it's actually a quite enjoyable and challenging game.

For retail I probably would pass, but on sale and as a collector of unique games, definitely worth picking up and playing at some point.

Derrick the Deathfin is a slightly self-aware and full of pizzazz arcade like side-scroller where you play as an emotionally scarred psychopathic shark that devours everything in sight. Oddly enough, this is a very light hearted game. Its style and gameplay is pretty unique, with a papercraft style of art leaving an attractive impression. There really isn't too much out there that similarly resembles Derrick the Deathfin, and that may be a good thing.